328 Science After the War
But how can they tell ? Suppose you want to know if a com-
mercial company is successful. You find out what dividends
it is paying and you examine its balance sheet. You find out
about the equipment of its plant and so forth. A business
man can easily find out if a company is doing a good busi-
ness. It is not so easy to find out about educational institu-
tions. They do not pay dividends, and if their graduates
are successful it is hard to know whether the success is in
spite of or because of the education they received. Besides,
it takes too long to wait and see if the graduates are suc-
cessful. One way of judging a university is to follow the
careers of its football and baseball teams. This is the usual
method, I believe; and while it might be worse, it is not
really satisfactory. The great universities in the United
States, like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, usually have
first-class football teams, but it does not follow that because
a university has a fairly good team it is therefore a
fairly good university. Another way is to find out what
the students at a school think about the education they are
getting. This method is of some value, but not very much.
The students do not know what a school ought to be like.
They may think it is good merely because they have never
seen anything better. Of course you can ask the President
if he thinks his university is a good one for you to send your
son to, but that is like asking a banker if he thinks his bank
is a good one for you to put your money into. The problem
is really not a very easy one, but I think a useful practical
solution can be found. There are in the United States many
good schools and universities which have well established
reputations. They are undoubtedly good. We may take,
for example, the public schools of Chicago and the University
of Princeton. The solution which ɪ suggest is to make a
detailed comparison between some such admittedly first-